The Summit: A Peak Experience

At Mount Greylock State Reservation, the summit may have been used by native peoples as a place of pilgrimage in the distant past, then was cleared by farmers in the early 1800s, beginning changes that continued as Massachusetts established the park in 1898 and remade the peak in the 1930s as a recreational landscape centered on the War Memorial Tower, Bascom Lodge, and the Appalachian Trail. After retiring as president of the University of Wisconsin in 1887, John C. Bascom returned to Williams College, became one of the first park commissioners, and strongly advocated preservation and broader public access. In the 1870s, an Adams hotel keeper built a summit hut to provide primitive lodging for summer hikers, reflecting growing local interest in the mountain as a scenic resource, and in 1885 Berkshire businesspeople set aside 400 acres at the peak, beginning a conservation effort that continued thereafter. By 1902 the park had grown to nearly ten times its initial size, and a summit house was built as a weatherproof structure for the superintendent with rough lodging for visitors, though advocates saw it as only a crude substitute for a grander building. After the old summer house burned in 1929, the state built a new stone lodge in 1932 and named it for Bascom; in summer it housed the park superintendent, and its original stone building later became the west wing of Bascom Lodge. Expanded and rebuilt by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1933 to 1938, Bascom Lodge became central to the modern summit experience, with dining and lounge areas on the first floor and lodging on the second, while its rustic style has been carefully maintained. The First World War brought a new awareness of war’s cost, and Massachusetts chose Greylock, the state’s highest place, as the site for a memorial to its losses; dedicated in 1933, the War Memorial Tower was intended as an enduring, silent, tangible expression of love and affection from the Commonwealth to soldiers and sailors in all conflicts. Today the summit still draws pilgrims, including people seeking to renew their connection to the natural world, while continuing the purpose John Bascom articulated in 1907: to preserve the fine hand-work of Nature and give adequate access to it.

Adams, Massachusetts · United States